


Once Upon a Time

by followsrabbit



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 04:28:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5033758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followsrabbit/pseuds/followsrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Fairytale curses aren't supposed to work.)</p><p>In which Simon Snow requires true love's kiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Time

**“True love’s kiss”** almost never works.  Most of the darkest spells never do.  They need – _more._ More than articulation and noise, more than a functional set of vocal cords.  The darkest curses run on belief, and no one with the magic to cast a true curse believes in Sleeping Beauties and Snow Whites. No one over the age of two, no one powerful enough to matter.

But the Insidious Humdrum, apparently, believes in fairytales. 

That’s the _once upon a time_ of this story.

* * *

From the minute – the second – that Snow and Bunce disappear in a whirl of magic and impossibility, Baz’s brain knots into a web of bronze curls and blue eyes.  They glow in his mind’s eye and center, dimming everything that belongs to him. 

(Like hunger and fangs.)

(Like the very reasonable worry that Wellbelove will tell her boyfriend’s precious Mage about _his_ fangs.)

(Like anything other than Simon bloody Snow.)

Wellbelove is still staring at him from beneath a hood of flaxen waves and yearning discontent, but Baz doesn’t have the energy to indulge either at the moment. It takes quite a bit of energy to play the Heathcliff to her Cathy, and _Wuthering Heights_ has always bored him to bloodlust.  So he turns on his heel, and leaves her to imagine the Wavering Wood into a stormy moor.

Only, Baz can hardly will himself after the dynamic disappearing duo, so he goes back to his room to take off his dirt-coated shoes and blood-specked shirt instead. Casts **“clean as a whistle”** on both.  Sits on his bed, then stands. Looks at Snow’s meager luggage, the strewn shirts the moron never learned how to properly fold, and turns. Folds his own sweaters into crisp lines and then into his suitcase.  Ponders what happens to people who vanish -- if they ever reappear, if their limbs bother to rematerialize in the proper order. 

Baz rubs a tick from his eye, discounting the first question as utter rubbish.  Snow always reappears.  Snow is a nonnegotiable fact of the fucking universe, as unavoidable as gravity and puberty combined, and must be _somewhere._

When Simon Snow dies -- if Simon Snow dies -- Baz will be there.  He doesn’t believe in fate, necessarily, but he believes in that.

As for the second…  Baz tilts the hair from his eyes, and wonders if he’d still spend the better portion of his spare time imagining Simon Snow’s body bare and flushed and beneath his own, if he had arms for legs and toes for fingers.  

Probably.

It’s become such a matter of course, that Baz can’t reckon showering _without_ wanking to musings of Snow and gold.

Wellbelove would likely toss him aside if he returned deformed.  Baz smirks at the thought.  At the memory of Snow staring at him in the woods, and the swelling satisfaction of proving how easily he could pull his girlfriend, if he wanted.  Shame he doesn’t.  Then the hole Snow and Bunce left rips open anew in his thoughts, and Baz’s smirk folds at the corners. It’s a frown.  It’s deepening.

* * *

It’s hours before he smells Snow’s particular musk of heroism and smoke on school-grounds again, but Baz doesn’t blink before spurning sleep to follow it to the nurse’s ward.

* * *

“ _Why isn’t it working_?” Craned over Snow with her eyelashes fluttering against his eyelids, Agatha Wellbelove sobs.  Baz can’t bring himself to care for her hysterics, not when Simon Snow is lying on a hospital bed in front of her, prone and limp and pale. Pale as white gold, paler than Baz.

“You’re not listening.” Huddled onto the foot of the cot, eyes blotchy and hair frazzled, Bunce speaks a scratched record. “It’s not any kiss.  It’s true love’s kiss.” Hysteria jumbles her voice, frizzier than her hair.  “The Humdrum cast **_true love’s kiss_**.”

 _Aleister Crowley.  Fuck._ **True love’s kiss** is a myth, a children’s tale, not a curse, and certainly not Simon Snow’s downfall.

Propping himself silent against the wall to keep from faltering or interrupting, Baz watches Agatha nibble the corner of her lower lip. “Then I should be able to help.  I have to, I--” She almost stomps her foot, but settles for insisting:  “I love him.”

“And you think I don’t? It’s not about loving Simon. That’s why it’s a curse. It’s about loving him more than _anything_.” Baz feels his name, their entwined hands, unsaid and glared between them.  “More than your family, more than yourself, more than life.”

“That’s – irrational.”

Bunce sighs a palm blotchy against her chin with one hand, strokes Simon’s knuckles with the other. “That’s love at its darkest, most obsessive, most perverse.  That’s love scorching and hollowing you inside out, to make room for someone else. That’s love beneath a fairytale’s briars and spindles, and I reckon that’s love for the Insidious Humdrum.”

“No one--” Agatha looks like she might vomit the remainder of her voice.  Her quivering pink lips and heavy lashes look they could make vomit lovely.  “No one loves like that.” Pity that he’s never thought much of her loveliness, all its surface level simpering.

It would be in poor taste to laugh, so Baz sneers instead.  Laughter dribbles through his stomach, mute and echoing all at once. Aleister Crowley, he wishes he didn’t.

The good thing about Simon Snow’s narrative protagonist egoism – it mutes Baz’s steps out of the room, blinds his sidekicks to the fact that he was ever there at all.

* * *

When he returns, the moon is bright, Bunce is gone, and Wellbelove has been gone longer.

None of this matters so much as Simon Snow’s lulling head and colorless cheeks and drooping arms.  The bronzed fingers opening towards the ground, grasping for something beyond their scope.

Skulking around hospital beds and herbal remedies like an honest to cliché Dracula, Baz lowers himself to Snow’s cot.  Drops his hands against Snow’s, palm on knuckles (because it doesn’t matter, because he’ll never know). 

For once, Snow’s skin feels as cool as Baz’s, as cold as its namesake.

(What kind of name is _Snow_ for a savior, anyhow.  Honestly.)

Baz turns to stare at Simon, more openly than he usually would, because he’ll never know about this either. Snow is practically spelled comatose, the Humdrum summoned him for the sake of a fairytale curse, and nothing makes sense, so Baz might as well go mad, too.  So he stares.  Indulges yet another vampire cliché. 

For a blink, he can almost pretend that they’re back in their room, that Snow is only sleeping, that this is any other midnight – it’s hardly new, the sight of moonlight shadowing Snow’s jaw.  His Adam’s Apple.  His lips.

Then he remembers Snow’s pulse against his, and the illusion shatters. His nighttime vigils never involve touch. (He’s disturbed and undead, fine, but he’s not about to molest his roommate awake – that would not only prove moronic and unhinged, but also counterproductive to his memorization of Snow’s moles.)

But maybe he is somewhat unhinged, because he lowers his mouth to Snow’s now, and breathes.  Doesn’t touch. Doesn’t move.  Just – breathes Snow’s quiet breath.

Mad. He’s mad. As long as Snow exists, he’ll be mad, so he might as well take advantage of temporary insanity, and—

Kissing Simon Snow would likely mean more if there weren’t a curse involved. It would likely be warmer. More responsive. Angrier.  Messier.  Less soft tugs, and more jagged edges.

(He’s given this thought; Snow would only ever kiss him for lunacy, fury, or perhaps blindness.)

But Snow’s lips barely even move at first, only blur against his, too limp and tired for anything more.

That’s – disappointing.  The only time he’ll ever pull Simon Snow, and the bastard doesn’t have the decency to make a proper kiss of it.

So Baz does the work for both of them.  He combs his nails through Snow’s hair, clenches his grip, and drags Snow’s Grecian-statuesque lower lip between his teeth, because he’s spent seven years wanting to.  Because his mother read _Peter Pan_ to him when he was young, and J.M. Barry claimed everyone has a secret kiss hiding in the corner of their mouth, and Baz will be damned if he doesn’t steal Snow’s.

(But he doesn’t bite.)  (He wouldn’t bite.)   

(Snow does.)

Still bleary against him, Snow’s lips revive before the rest of him does. They sear. Chew. Prod, push, take. They suck and suck and suck, drinking every bit of breath they can reach, as if _he’s_ the vampire between them. Baz gives it all to him.

He tastes like smoke and open flames, and all the magic Baz has ever wanted to grip. All the things that anyone remotely flammable should avoid, and all the things Baz would choose for his funeral pyre.

Then Snow goes off, and Baz snaps away in spite of bouncing curls and thick lips; wonders if his funeral pyre has come sooner rather than later, and if he’d throw himself headfirst just to keep his lips on Simon Snow’s.

Snow’s eyes are still closed, he’s panicking and magicking himself awake, and Baz wants to stay to soothe and spat him calm, but can’t. Won’t.  He runs – well, saunters – away instead.

He might die of Snow someday, might kill him even, but he’s not about to admit to saving him.  Not to a rat, not to a soul.

The door cringes shut behind him.

Snow will be fine, all will be right with the World of Mages, no one -- least of all his roommate -- will ever know Baz was here.

* * *

It’s the last morning of the school year, and Watford should be jittering with chatter about summer plans and beach vacations, but all anyone can talk about is Simon Snow. Of course.  Always Simon Snow.  For once, Baz contents himself with glaring at the apple in his hand, rather than across the dining hall, as though its bright red peel is to blame.

 _“I heard Agatha Wellbelove gave him_ true love’s kiss.”

_“Can you imagine? Loving someone that much?”_

_“I bet you they’ll elope this summer.”_

_“… kiss.”_

_“... true love …”_

_“Did you hear…:_

Baz curses vampire hearing, and contemplates choking on his apple just to put himself out of the day’s misery.

* * *

It’s his last night at Watford for the year, so Baz should be long asleep.  He’d never admit it aloud, but he prefers his bed in Mummers House to the sprawling, gargoyle clad one awaiting him at home. He likes that it’s only ever known his weight. He likes that it’s long molded to his muscles and shape and height.  He likes that it’s close enough to Snow’s to make a metronome of his breath; that he can tell his dreams from his nightmares, his restless nights from his dead ones.

(Likes. Loathes.  Agonizes.  Same difference.)

But that was before he went and kissed Snow free from a fairytale slumber.  Before he spent a day hearing every professor and student with a pulse call Agatha Wellbelove a beacon of _true love_.

Strange that no one noticed how the happy couple barely murmured a word to one another all afternoon.

He’s never felt less like seeing Snow.  Not even at fifteen, the year of blood-drenched fantasies and voice-theft.  He didn’t think it was possible for his hatred of Snow to surpass fifth year.  Baz groans the shirt from his back, damns his naivety, and readies for bed in the dark.

 _Should have let him rot._  

“I know you were in my room yesterday.”

Mid-step from the bathroom, Baz panics still before proceeding to bed. With the curtains closed and the moonlight blocked, it’s dark enough that Snow shouldn’t be able to see the horror in his eyes.

“It _is_  ourroom, Snow.  Tragically.”

Lying flat against his wrinkled pillow – Snow really needs to change his sheets more often – his roommate stares at him through the pitch black.  “My hospital room.”

“Naturally. The sight of you cursed and bed-ridden is one of the chief joys of my existence,” Baz sneers. “Call it inspiration.”

He can hear Snow’s heartbeat, can hear the utter lack of sleep slowing it.  Should have known a sleeping curse might just sap a mage of tiredness. Should have avoided their bloody room a few hours longer.

But the heartbeat next to him isn’t just awake, it’s – Baz’s jaw tenses.  Thumping.  Sprinting.

“I would have tried too, you know.  If it were you. I—“ Snow drags a hand through his hair, as though he might find a complete sentence among the mussed curls. “I couldn’t have not, I don’t think.”

Baz drawls, “Am I supposed to understand a word of that?  Should I summon Bunce to translate?” because it’s easier than admitting the sledgehammer of his own heartbeat.

“It wasn’t Agatha who kissed me.”  Their mattresses are a pace away from one another’s on a good day; Snow feels closer now, as though he used his grand prophesied powers to bridge them together. “Was it?”

“She’s your girlfriend. If she hasn’t kissed you, I’d reconsider your relationship.”

Simon stammers smoke. “Will you just--”

In the interest of protecting their bedroom from a fiery demise, Baz resists the urge to taunt him – to fall back on routine and out of the insanity of the past day. “Will I just…”

Well.  He resists the urge to taunt him much.

Snow keeps stewing and steaming and stuttering, then growling, and then –

Baz feels Snow’s growl in his throat.  He feels Snow on top of him.

He feels it, because Simon Snow _is_ on top of him. Growling against his lips.  Cursing Baz still.  Simon Snow is kissing him, groaning his jaw against his, pushing Baz’s head deep into his pillow, and it’s a bloody dream. (Except he can feel the scratch of fingernails against his cheekbones.)  (Except Simon is always beneath him in his dreams.  Usually. Sometimes beside him.)

Baz darts his lips against his favorite of Simon’s moles.

Simon Snow is kissing him.  Dreaming or not, he’d be an idiot not to take advantage.

“Knew it,” he feels the word against his jaw.

Raising an eyebrow against Snow’s cheek, Baz fights for articulation. “You know nothing, Snow. Never have.”

Simon’s lips sculpt to his jaw, pause.  “I would have tried, too,” he repeats.  “Would have had to.  I didn’t know it until I woke up, but--”

Baz forces Simon's lips back to his and twists the words from his tongue.  Another growl cracks the cricket murmur quiet, and the whole thing starts again.

* * *

It starts again several times.

* * *

Baz should probably force him away at some point, straight onto the floor with a sneer.  A spat. 

He _should_.  He doesn't.

* * *

 “Even?” Snow asks eventually, one eyebrow arched above his.  He’s heaving, and Baz can’t help but inhale the bulk of it, can’t help but inhale Snow again a moment later.

(A second later.) (Half a second.) (He’ll dwell on his troubling lack of willpower later, when summer comes, and Snow is miles and months away.)

“I saved you from a mythical curse,” Baz presses a sneer against the corner of Simon's mouth. “Not even close.”

He can’t have a happily ever after, but this – he flips Snow beneath him – _this_ , he’ll take.


End file.
